


13 Steps to Surrender to Waterfalls

by shelter



Series: Evenings without echoes [8]
Category: Claymore (Anime & Manga)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Healing, Human-warrior relations, One-Shot Collection, Pacifism, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rabona, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings, Yoki Manipulation, constant war, good ending, post-manga
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:28:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23492458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shelter/pseuds/shelter
Summary: Post-Series. As Rabona prepares for war, Yuma is called in to heal a fellow warrior - Raftela - who has climbed into bed, fallen asleep and refuses to wake up.
Relationships: Miria/Yuma (Claymore)
Series: Evenings without echoes [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/489364
Comments: 6
Kudos: 7





	13 Steps to Surrender to Waterfalls

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written through 3 big changes in my life: beginning of my official studies in a new country, my rushed departure from that country due to the pandemic currently sweeping the world, and my re-adjustment back home in quarantine. So I guess this story reflects (subconsciously) these events: uncertainty, fear and finally, acceptance.

"In recovery, things don't always get better. But they always get different." 

\- Anonymous quote from A.A.

* * *

**1.**

After she returns from the south, Raftela climbs into bed and never wakes up. She lies in state in the garrison attached to the High Commander’s office. Yuma sees her there, enshrined in a blush of sunlight. Nurses have pulled the sheets to her chin, laid her two long tresses symmetrically and created a small hill of her hands atop a plain of white linen.

She's like a sleeping beauty, Yuma thinks.

Kneeling at Raftela’s bedside, Yuma gently caresses the other warrior’s wrists. She synchronises her yoki and feels nothing but a sharp, slippery abyss. When she tries to follow it down, it feels like a wet machete is stabbing through her chest.

Rachel, the acting High Commander, clears her throat behind her.

“So can you cure her?”

“It might take some time,” Yuma says.

“Is that your opinion as the best healer on the Island?”

Yuma shrugs her shoulders. “What’s the rush?”

Rachel’s right foot nudges Yuma’s back. “If you haven’t noticed, we’re dealing with a peasant rebellion. And Audrey's gone AWOL. We need all the warriors we can get.”

In the dark gorge of Raftela’s yoki, Yuma senses nothing but a tunnel worming its way deeper and deeper down. She peers into the vast black hole, wondering whether to jump from the precipice.

But then Miria shows up.

* * *

**2.**

“She doesn’t want to be found.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s not an illness. Raftela doesn’t want to wake up.”

Yuma clasps Miria’s hands. Her fingers laced with the older warrior’s, she feels the current of Miria’s yoki flowing through her. It suffuses her with a deep warmth, like drinking tea on a cold day. It’s her reassurance –

Her anchor – rooting her self to the ground as she delves into the chasm of Raftela’s consciousness. There, Yuma walks through cascading curtains of darkness. They're so thick and sweaty with memory that they swallow her hands and latch themselves to her throat.

"Something happened in the south," Yuma says.

"Or maybe it's something else."

They’re standing on a balcony overlooking the garrison. The setting sun torches Rabona’s siege machinery with long, jagged shadows. In a courtyard below, Rachel drills trainees in swordplay. For a silent moment, the sky is decorated with the broken tails of clouds, curled invisibly by winds so high that can’t be felt.

Miria sighs, leans an arm on Yuma’s shoulder.

“You’ll be talking to those trainees soon.”

“I know,” Yuma says.

“Fought to free ourselves from the Organisation. Only to get mixed up in human politics.”

“Just another day in paradise, Captain Miria.”

“It’s been a long time since someone’s called me that.”

Yuma means it. Even if Miria's all linen, peasant’s dress, the hem of her sleeves stained from picking pomegranates. Her neck tanned from hours working with villagers in the sun. Her bare feet forever the colour of ash and barely washed-off mud.

Even if Miria's everything Yuma isn't, she's still Captain Miria, she thinks.

“You need to save her,” Miria says. “Just like you saved me.”

“I’ll try.”

“And I agree with Rachel about you.”

“Huh. First time you and her agreed on anything.”

They watch the sun descend below the city walls, until the sky is soaked in a puddle of pale orange fading into murky blue. Lights ignite around the ramparts. Church bells call out for vespers.

Yuma realises she’s still holding Miria’s hand.

* * *

**3.**

Every day, Yuma kneels at Raftela’s bedside. She addresses wounds that have healed with time, but not completely. With her yoki, she seeks out the bruised muscles, unstable bones and limbs throbbing with the memory of pain. A body of trauma, Yuma feels.

Then she dives, head-first, into Raftela’s consciousness. She doesn’t carry a weapon. She crawls through the obstacle course of Raftela’s instability, up the ladders holding up her despair. In the dark, all Yuma has to sustain her is knowing she’s been in darker places: Miria’s own landscape of pain.

She wanders until her knees cramp. She never connects with Raftela.

At the end of every day, she tells Raftela, “You’re not alone. I’m here. Miria’s here. Your sisters are here.”

And sometimes she's rebuked by a voice echoing through yoki channels: "I killed so many of my sisters. Do they even think I'm human?"

Before she leaves, the nurses count the days: 125 since Raftela went to sleep. Before she leaves, she cleans the sweat gathering on Raftela’s forehead.

After a week, she heads to Miria in her village, an hour’s walk through the hills from Rabona. The slopes are guarded by hundreds of olive trees. Farmers, water-carriers and shepherds greet her, as she cuts through the groves, abandoning the winding road straight for Miria’s hamlet.

Yuma finds Miria by a stream, talking to women. From their dialect, Yuma knows they're refugees from the east. Toddlers play in the spread of her dress. Nearby children somersault off a series of waterfalls, then coast down the rapids.

She waits patiently in the trees, only revealing herself when the women get up to leave.

“You came,” Miria says. “How’s Raftela?”

Yuma shakes her head. They walk up the hills, a local maiden accompanied by an all-black warrior brandishing a sword. Villagers invite them to their homes for dinner. Miria politely declines; Yuma accepts some of their bread.

Yuma always pauses at the threshold before entering Miria’s house. Sometimes, there are too many memories. Too much pain. Her own pain. Today, she’s tired. So she doesn’t think of the overlapping gates into the trench of Raftela’s pain. Instead she feels the warm bread in her hand, the aroma of cinnamon in the coffee Miria will prepare.

Small things. Good things. Small steps.

Soon, when the bread’s finished and the coffee pot’s drained, they sit before the fire. Yuma releases her yoki, all her pent-up frustration at not reaching Raftela. The fire warps, cowed. Even Miria squirms away.

“Sorry.”

“It’s fine. You’re trying your best.”

Yuma has an idea though.

“I need your help with Raftela.”

“Me?” Miria laughs. “I’m not good at yoki manipulation. Just suppression.”

“I need someone who’s like Raftela. Who thinks like her, and who’s been hurt like her.”

Miria’s quiet for a while. Yuma can’t read her.

“Raftela's a master at yoki manipulation,” she finally says. "You'll have to guide me."

Later, as Yuma prepares to make the trek back to Rabona, Miria unlatches Yuma’s Claymore, and lays it by her fireplace. Then she spreads her skirt over Yuma’s feet.

“Stay the night?” she asks.

Yuma does.

* * *

**4.**

Yuma has two dreams in quick succession. In the first, she’s throwing her Claymore for the first time again. As her target blindly barrels her way, she unleashes her spinning sword. It shreds her target to ribbons. But it doesn’t stop. It does an complete arc, loops back at her in a tornado of blood.

Then, she finds herself on a beach. Waves scrape the sand from under her feet. She sees someone – a warrior – Raftela – swimming out to the horizon. But the horizon is inverted, and it becomes a black, leaking whirlpool. Before she knows it, the sea has become a hundred thousand liquid corpses, dragging everything back to itself.

“Will you lose yourself to the sea?” Yuma asks.

She brings these memories into her sessions with Raftela. Now, with Miria backing her up, she walks along the tideline on a beach choked with flotsam – half-sunken ruins of cities, fragments of ships and the groping grip of uncountable disembodied, outstretched hands.

Storms lash at the sun, forever drowning on the horizon. Everything looks like a pale shadow of itself. The only thing that looks real is a gushing fountain of yoki so viscous it stains the sand a molten silver. As Yuma approaches the source, she curls her fingers into the invisible presence that is Miria’s, who’s coordinating her yoki in parallel with hers.

She steps past the totems of sludge formed by the torrent. There’s so much emotion in it: resentment, anger, disappointment, fear.

But she reaches the source: in a watery grave, lies Raftela, almost completely buried under corpses. Silver leaches from her body, as if she’s been losing her skin. Her eyes don’t register anything but the sky.

“Raftela?”

The corpses all come to life. They clamber out of the grave, grasping at Yuma. Some chain their rotting arms to her neck and others clasp at her feet. But she holds her ground: she has Miria to guarantee she’ll survive this.

“Raftela? Remember me?”

Her eyes show the bare minimum of recognition.

“You don’t have to bury yourself in your pain.”

“I couldn’t save them. I let so many of them die.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Yuma says. “You did your best.”

“I deserve what I have.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I just want to sleep.”

A storm lands on the shore. The corpses retreat into a writhing mass around Raftela, and the waves hammer into Yuma as she frees herself. The tide comes in so fast that the toxic, stinging water slaps into her cheeks.

A ship breaks apart nearby. When Yuma tries to run to the shore, she sees nothing but darkness.

Lightning illuminates a sea of shattered swords. Hundreds of sisters that Raftela killed as Number 10 wait with their hands amputated or faces slashed.

Among them is Miria, coloured with dozens of stab wounds.

“Yuma?” Miria’s voice, trembling.

“I know.” Yuma controls her breathing.

She thinks of the first thing she’s grateful for, and she comes up with Cynthia’s smile of surprise after she healed her for the first time.

She tells the storm: “There are people who care about you.”

A wave blows out her vision.

“Yuma!”

Yuma wakes in the room in the garrison, thrown from her kneeling position. She’s drenched in foul-smelling salt water, while on the bed, Raftela sleeps, perfectly peaceful.

Miria's clutching her face, her facial scars bruised and angry. But she still seizes Yuma and kisses her forehead.

“You’re insane,” Miria tells her.

“I saw her.”

“I know. I could feel it.”

Before they leave, they see teardrops pooling in the valleys of Raftela’s eyes.

* * *

**5.**

“I need to know what happened in the south,” Yuma tells Rachel. “Where Raftela was stationed all those years.”

“If it’s going help her become get back on her feet.”

When she’s not with Raftela, Yuma speaks to those who need her help. There are her fellow sisters: doubtful about their choices, upset about sisters they’ve lost or were forced to murder. Others come to her dreaming of the blood of humans they’ve killed, or they're abused and battered by their human husbands. She sees crushed fingers, puncture wounds from arrows and trainees crying into her arms.

The rebellion continues. One sister nearly burns to death when ambushed in a dry valley. Yuma sees to the physical wounds, but pays more attention to the ones hidden from sight: trauma, sense of failure and resentment.

“If you knew that this was going on in the south, why didn’t you recall her?”

Rachel shrugs. “Audrey sent her there. She kept the southern coast safe.”

“At what cost?”

So she visits Miria, and walks with her in the forests fringing tallest hills. As she struggles to dodge roots in the undergrowth with her sword, she looks to Miria, barefoot, light dancing off her unleashed hair.

Miria always brings her to another waterfall. It drops in a vertical wispy stream from ledge of black rocks into a bowl of sparkling water fringed by moss so green Yuma thinks they’re glowing.

Miria leads her to the summit, wades to the centre of the stream.

“This is what children in my village do in their free time.” Miria says.

“And you say I’m crazy.”

“Jump with me.”

"What about the rocks?"

"If you're afraid, just let go and let the current guide you to the deepest part of the pool."

Miria laughs. Yuma has never seen her captain so free, so released from the world. She watches as Miria walks backwards in the flow. With her phantom speed, she backflips off the brink in a burst of scattered water.

Yuma rushes to the edge. She doesn’t see Miria land. Just the ripples emanating from the point of impact.

She senses nothing but a breath of wind, and Miria’s back on the ledge with her.

“Ready?”

All Yuma can think off is the sandy edge of Raftela’s grave, an overhang so unstable it’ll collapse into the inferno of wasting corpses. But Yuma looks up to see the present: the pools of Miria’s silver eyes decorated with the reflected forest. Pools so deep, but where she's never drowned.

She grabs Miria’s hand and hurls herself off the edge.

* * *

**6.**

“Ready?”

Yuma steps off the ledge and falls into a sea of decomposing limbs. The moment she lands, they swarm over her like a horde of slimy, veined worms.

She feels the pulse of Miria’s yoki releasing. Small and shadowy, it explodes in the restricted space of the grave, and for a short moment, clears enough detritus for Yuma to see Raftela resting at the waterlogged bottom of the pit.

No time to waste. Yuma kneels at Raftela’s side, pours all her yoki into the next few moments. She seizes the taller warrior’s hands. With her other hand, she scrubs away the sinuous arms crawling all around her.

“Miria?”

“A moment.”

Miria materialises as an incorporeal shadow on Raftela’s other side. This deep in Raftela’s consciousness, Yuma sees that Miria’s also struggling to manipulate her yoki to stay in this twisted, dreamworld.

Then, Raftela’s voice, at first normal then threatening: “Please leave. Before we all die here.”

“Not without you.”

Yuma digs Raftela’s hand out from the waste. She releases her own yoki, synchronising her own consciousness with Raftela’s. She combs through the memories she has of Raftela. But she focuses on just two:

A cold day in the mountains, whiskers of snow in the air, Miria embraces Raftela on the day the Organisation fell and –

(A second-hand memory that she learnt from Raki) A pack of trainee warriors holding up Raftela as she saves Audrey and the others from being killed by a resurrected Hysteria –

The ocean crashes over the pit. Bodies blackened by rot burst from the sand. All of them bristle and surge onto Yuma. She holds onto these two memories as fingers half bitten to bone scrape her cheeks, tongues like slugs wipe blood over her eyes and –

“Yuma!”

She addresses Raftela instead, “You can't blame yourself for what you had no control over.”

Miria's voice follows: "Their deaths are not your fault, Raftela."

“Yes they were.”

“Then you can still save one more person: yourself.”

The walls holding up Raftela’s grave collapse. The last thing she sees is a memory, but it’s Raftela’s: a warrior being sent off by a crowd of crying and clapping women by the sea.

“You need to live for all those you couldn't save,” Yuma says. “Only you can do it.”

There's a burst of yoki so great it lifts Yuma off feet and turns everything white.

When Yuma wakes, she’s sprawled on the ground in the garrison. She scratches her face to get rid of the sensation of being buried alive.

But no, she’s here. And Miria’s beside her, completely dowsed in sweat.

And on her bed, Raftela weeps. She says over and over again:

“It was my fault.”

* * *

**7.**

Too weak to move, too upset to speak, Raftela spends her days staring at the roof. The nurses attending her tell Yuma she only talks to her. She never sleeps, fearing a descent into dreams plagued with mourning and loss.

"What do you see?"

"My home in Sinop. By the beach. The weather's perfect at this time of the year. But –"

"But? Tell me."

Yuma holds Raftela's hand. The taller warrior's grip is feathery, so slight. It's a bony pebble nestled in the sweaty pond of her palm.

"There are always dead bodies on the beach. Every morning."

"The war on the mainland?"

"Yeah."

"What are the happiest memories you have? Think of these."

Briefly, as Raftela obeys, their yokis align, and Yuma sees those faces again. Ladies crying, ulu-lating, cheering. One even garlands Raftela with flowers. She also sees the world as Raftela sees it: as a patron in a tavern, having a meal, a routine so regular it's ingrained in her yoki signature.

"I'm – I can't –"

"It's all right," Yuma says.

"You're healing. We'll take it easy."

"I killed so many warriors for the Organisation. Then let so many die in the south. Will the dead ever forgive me?"

"For others to forgive you, you need to forgive yourself."

Outside the room, Miria and Rachel talk. Yuma's exhausted with trying to help Raftela recover, so she just hears snatches of their conversation. The rebellion has blocked off the main road south. Several sisters are rumoured to be helping the rebels. And all warriors of their generation have been mobilised.

"Rachel, none of them will come. Not Helen and Deneve," Miria says. "Definitely not Clare."

"We need people like you on the frontline," Rachel says. She jabs a finger square into Miria's chest. "So stop playing village girl already."

Yuma knows Miria isn't going to take the bait. Rachel knows it too, so she comes to Yuma.

"Best healer on the Island," she says, straightening Yuma's shoulders. "Knew I could count on you."

"Thanks –"

"I want Raftela up and with her sword in a week."

* * *

**8.**

"I remember the food," Raftela says.

Yuma can't dice garlic to save her life, and she confuses dill with parsley. Even after following instructions from several southerners, she still can't get the noodle broth to reach the correct consistency. Thankfully, Miria's there to make sure she doesn't burn down the garrison.

"You think this will help?" she asks.

Some things, when used in tandem with yoki, are powerful. Yuma thinks of Irene's flesh joined at Clare's shoulder, and Raki's touch waking Clare from her Priscilla-induced coma. Yoki is just a trigger, a fuse for something more explosive.

"Let's try," Yuma says.

When she serves Raftela, her face says it all. Something opens. As she slurps the noodles and gently takes the bowl to her lips to finish the broth, Yuma senses Raftela's yoki coalesce, soften.

"You're a terrible cook, Yuma," Raftela says, her face shed of all emotion.

"Too salty?"

"And the noodles taste like soil. There's too much garlic and not enough spice."

"Ah – well – I – thought –"

"But thank you."

This time Raftela reaches out, shaking. She gives Yuma's wrist the gentlest of touches. But that slight graze of skin – Yuma feels the warmth, the succulent satisfaction of something other than raw yoki.

Later, as Yuma tries to calculate the right amount turmeric and cloves to add to her next attempt, Miria takes her wrist.

"Remember to cook some extra next time," she says

"I don't want to poison you."

Miria frowns, then says, "You don't give yourself enough credit, Yuma."

She dips a finger in a bowl of olive oil, and anoints Yuma's forehead with a stroke.

"Take this as your captain's blessing," Miria says.

* * *

**9.**

"Miss Yuma? Please, you're needed at the garrison."

The voice comes from the window, and when she doesn't answer a tattoo of knocks begins.

Yuma sighs. All she wanted was a peaceful night after more waterfall-leaping with Miria –

She moves Miria's sleeping arm from her shoulder and tries to leave as discreetly as possible.

Outside, the messenger from Rabona waits with an extra horse. Yuma mounts it wordlessly and they ride away from the sleepy, shadowy stillness of Miria's village. The hills are swaddled in fog, and early morning frost sparkles over the steaming fields. It's hard to believe there's a war raging.

When she reaches the garrison, Yuma sees a disturbing amount of wounded soldiers. Arrow wounds, punctured armour, blood seeping through bandages –

"This way. Please hurry," says a nurse on duty.

They usher in through the gate, then into one of the rooms, candlelight lapping at the ceiling. Inside, on a bile-soaked white sheet on the floor, Rachel holds the remaining hand of a fellow warrior who's bleeding out.

"Oh my –"

"You took a long time to arrive," Rachel says.

Nurses have dressed her words, but almost all her limbs are hanging by flecks of joints and muscle. Yuma parts the warrior's blood-matted oxbow curls, sees the near-horizontal laceration at the back of the neck.

"You know what this is, Yuma?" Rachel asks.

"Is – did they try to behead –"

"Now you know the kind of demons we're fighting against."

Yuma puts her hand on the wound. She sees her hand is shaking. So she clenches it. She takes a deep breath, empties any thought from her mind. She focuses on closing the wound. As she connects with her fellow sisters' yoki, she senses pain – so much pain – and fear and uncertainty. Her hands begin to tremble again. But she thinks of two things: humans applauding Raftela as she leaves Sinop, and Miria's arm on her shoulder, a universe away.

"You're going to be okay," she tells the warrior she's healing.

When she finishes healing, the sun is blazing away in the sky. The blood smudged on her hands, clothes and around the room begins to smell. She tells the nurses to give the wounded water.

She steps outside into the heat of the sunlight, into the chaos of a courtyard filled with the dying and the dead. Something pricks at the back of her head. When she looks up, she sees Raftela looking down at her from her window.

Yuma waves, and something connects. Is that – empathy?

But her hand's still quivering. And then the blood wrapping around her arms like a second skin becomes too much. And she's crying, crying because all this is so senseless –

* * *

**10.**

"The scenery isn't nice, but it's the best place to see the sunset."

"Thank you."

Yuma shadows Raftela and Miria, her thoughts tied to the taller warrior's yoki like a leash. Strong enough to walk, Raftela limps, partly leaning on Miria's shoulder, along the ramparts of the holy city.

They tour the walls as if they're inspecting the defences. Soldiers, seeing Raftela still in full armour and sword, salute her. They share their wartime rations. Some try to flirt with Miria, thinking her human. Yuma gets more recognition by the captains as a healer of Claymores, and she likes the bubble of normalcy when locked into their conversations.

"She's pretty," one of them says, nodding at Raftela. "Who is she?"

"She's recovering from – from her deployment in the south."

All through their walk, Yuma feels the saturated doubt emitting from Raftela give way to an easy contentment. She's a natural when connecting to humans, telling stories about waking up to the waves and walking on the beaches.

Perhaps after a lifetime of killing fellow warriors, Raftela relates to humans with less guilt.

They end at the east gate, nearest to the garrison. Below them lies the ever-moving mosaic of a public square, with a fountain of St Teresa in the centre. But there are few merchants or families: the square is now a suburb of military paraphernalia and soldiers on duty.

"You must visit us more often, Miss," a soldier at the tower of east gate says. "We don't get ladies like yourselves here!"

"Yeah we only get Commander Rachel!"

"I'll pretend I didn't hear that," says Yuma.

One of the captains takes Miria's hand, and kisses it gallantly. He asks, "Could we have the pleasure of you staying just one night? It'll make night shift so much more bearable!" Miria laughs.

"Sorry to turn you down, Captain. I already have someone to spend my nights with."

Yuma sees Miria give her the barest of glances, but she can't hide the bright skip in her yoki. And Yuma's certain Raftela felt it too.

When they return to the garrison, Yuma goes to prepare dinner. But Raftela stops her. The taller warrior looks at her and Miria, takes a deep breath and says, "Can you teach me to fix lives like you both do?"

* * *

**11.**

"I made a list," Raftela says.

"Well, the nurses wrote it out for me."

"You thought it through?"

"I did. Do you want me to read it out?"

"Only if you want me to hear it."

It's Raftela's last day in the room attached to the garrison. All her nurses have been reassigned to help the increasing number of war wounded. To the High Command, she's due to be redeployed into the field, having fully recovered. But both she and Yuma know that will not happen.

"All right," Raftela says.

_I forgive the commanders in Sinop for what they did to me, for betraying me and treating me as expendable. I forgive them because they did these actions out of fear and in situations that they had no control over._

_I forgive Audrey, for leaving me to fend for myself in south for those years. Because she did not and could not have known what I would face._

_And I forgive the – Organisation, for – for what it did to me. They were evil, abusive and deranged. But they are gone. And I forgive so I can find the peace and strength to ensure no other will rise in its place –_

Raftela's crouched over, reading by candlelight. Her hands tremble, and her yoki is all over the place. Soon, veins encircle her arms like ropes, and her teeth narrow into incisors. But Yuma holds on to her wrists, rooting her to the present.

With every hard pulse, Yuma senses a burst of Raftela's yoki. She dwells on that boom, boom, boom of consciousness and she sees a vision. There, on the Southern coast, is Raftela. She's lighting candles, arranging flowers. She's preparing offerings. Her human friends are with her. When's she's done, she casts them onto the sea, to be taken away by the eternal drift.

Yuma sees that the sea in Raftela's consciousness. Instead of one inverted with the dead like just weeks ago, it's a carpet wavy with hundreds of floating stars.

"Take your time," Yuma says.

But Raftela clears her throat and continues:

_Last of all, I forgive myself. For not protecting the god people of Sinop. For not being good or strong enough. For all the harm I've caused my fellow sisters as a Number 10. I did not know better. But now I do. I give myself the permission to make mistakes. I did the best in my power to protect those I care about. And I will continue to do so._

Raftela folds the paper in half. She closes her eyes and exhales. Yuma knows it's all symbolic. Flesh wounds heal, and sometimes milestones acquire significance. But trauma, fear and insecurity don't disappear with physical recovery or a confession.

Yuma knows they fade into the background through steps. Getting help from her sisters is a small start.

"Let's go," Raftela says.

"Now?"

"I should start as soon as possible."

"You're a hundred percent sure you want to do this?" Yuma asks.

Raftela picks up her Claymore, still wrapped in a leather scabbard. She stares at it for a moment.

"Yes."

"It's going to be hard to protect those you care about without your Claymore."

"I'll have to the learn then," Raftela says, leading the way to Rachel's office. "After all, I have you and Miria to teach me."

* * *

**12.**

Yuma and Raftela make their way to Miria's hamlet on a rainy afternoon.

Rainclouds hang in pregnant folds over the hills. They walk the gentle gradient of the road until Rabona falls behind, obscured by a curtain of grey rain.

Yuma leads them through the olive groves, but Miria's nowhere to be found. Following the terraces, she moves at Raftela's pace. Out of the city for the first time in weeks, Raftela keeps stopping to breathe in the chilly girdle of fog wrapped around the upper reaches of the olive-tree clad hills.

Even up here, signs of an imminent war are evident. Yuma spots tents among the groves: refugees with nowhere to go. An armed guard lazily waves her past an intersection. Ditches have been dug around the village.

But Yuma sees Miria just outside the tiny village square. She's talking to the local girls, bread in her arms. The wind causes the trees to weep, shedding droplets that dot the sleeves of her dress.

"Who's your new friend, Miria?" a girl asks.

"She's Raftela and –"

"I've just returned from the south."

"I like the way you wear your hair," one of them says. "Want some bread?"

Raftela's fingers go to her two long front bangs. She's now become the centre of attention for a gaggle of boisterous village girls. So different, Yuma thinks, for just several hours before.

Raftela had walked into Rachel's office, read the same list she'd read to Yuma and then laid her Claymore at her feet. There seemed to be a certain cycle to what Raftela was doing: the 'trump card' of the now-dead Organisation, finally making peace with herself and her history of failing and letting those close to her die.

All Rachel had said was, " Every day you're not fighting, you're letting your comrades die."

And all Raftela answered was, "I won't let them. I'll be a healer as good as Yuma."

Then Rachel had turned to her. "You going to give up on me too?"

Yuma had taken a while to answer.

But now Miria unfastens the straps holding her Claymore to her back. And Yuma can't do anything but feel hungry at the aroma of freshly-baked bread. She knows that soon, with the curious girls stalking them, all three of them will retreat to Miria's house, where a warm fire, bread and spiced coffee are waiting.

* * *

**13.**

Yuma dreams of the Ghosts. She dreams of the seven of them sitting around a fire, without their swords, laughing at something dumb Helen did. She dreams of Miria chuckling in her unassuming way, of Clare laughing through a facepalm. She dreams of Tabitha, who she misses so much.

She carries the visions of her dream through their pre-dawn hike through the forest to Miria's waterfall. Miria leads, and Yuma and Raftela follow the delicate embroidery of her footsteps on the trail. Darkness still lingers in pockets of the forest, tinged with green.

Yesterday's rain has made their waterfall a lashing mountain of brown water and debris. Its flow leads to an impressive plunge pool obscured by tossed-up spray.

At the summit, a group of young guys and girls from the village are daring each other to enter the current. Miria beats them all to it. She navigates to the centre of the stream, lies down and lets go. Yuma catches a glimpse of her, vaulting off the edge.

"Both are you are crazy," Raftela says.

"Same thing I said to Miria."

"I hope she's all right."

"If you surrender to the flow, it'll guide you to the deepest point."

Raftela looks at her as if she's said profound. But Yuma's setting her Claymore aside, and wading to the centre. She catches a fleeting, watery glimpse of Raftela, her long hair already splayed to the sides of her face by waterfall mist, before going under.

For a moment, the water blocks out all her senses – save her wandering yoki. It connects her to Raftela, a flare of worry on the river bank. But mostly, in her own world, Yuma think of two things: the cooling peace of the water around her and her answer to Rachel –

"I'm not her for the humans. I'm only here for the warriors I call my sisters."

She releases her grip on the stream bed, and the water pulls her away. All she sees is the rushing sky, the clouds inverted, a blast of air and then the descent into fog made iridescent by the morning light. She hits the water feet first. She touches the bottom of the pool, before floating, free.

When Yuma surfaces, she can't see anything but the grey of waterfall mist.

In this otherworldly atmosphere, she treads water, her breath dusting into smoke.

Outside this grey chamber, a war's raging. Soon her hands will be coated with blood again. But she chooses to focus on the now:

The boom of crashing water.

Raftela's yoki finding courage as she steps into the current.

And Miria's arms encircling her from behind.

.

.

.

_END_

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> This work references two of my stories in this collection, "Though the Heavens Fall" and "The Noodle House". 
> 
> I generally writing about either obscure characters (Yuma, Raftela) or different dimensions on popular ones (a pacifist Miria not willing to hide her feelings). I take this story as a crack pairing, but in my own version of canon, Yuma eventually realises her potential as a combination of both Tabitha and Cynthia - a master healer and cose confidante of Miria.
> 
> There's a term for Raftela's condition: "Resignation Syndrome". It's a physiological and psychological condition that affects children of asylum-seekers in Sweden. 
> 
> Questions for readers:
> 
> 1) What's your opinion on Miria's characterisation in this story?  
> 2) Warriors who shun war - realistic or a bit too fantastic for your taste?
> 
> I'm sorry if this story is long. It took on a life of its own as things around the world went out of control.
> 
> If you're reading this, and you're under lockdown, I share your isolation. I'm finishing off my overseas studies from home like many others. I'm going to come up with more stories since I have more free time to keep myself (and everyone) entertained.


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